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Culture

Early in my career…

  Reading old clips from my first days as a small town newspaperman is a sad reminder that for me, “news” was definitely a four-letter word.

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Culture

Why We Write: From Bylines to Blue Streaks

Last year, a colleague of mine at the Future Journalism Project (a collective of reporters, editors and documentarians exploring “disruption, opportunity and innovation in journalism”) received a reader query that asked: “What is it about journalism that you love? Why did you become a journalist?” The FJP’s brain-trust, Michael Cervieri, turned the question over to…

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Culture

Covering the Apocalypse

I’ve often wondered what it might be like to be an embedded journalist during?Armageddon (sadly, my shrink would observe this says more about my career and the state of the industry than the end of the world). Happily, I’ve found I’m not alone:??On the Media offers an interesting segment, Covering the Apocalypse, in which veteran…

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Culture

Clark Kent Laid Off, Starts Blog

The Daily Planet laid me off today. My editor Perry sauntered over to my cube, dropped his bristly knuckles on my desk and said, ?Clark, can I have a word?? Normally, this would be followed by a refresher on our sexual harassment policy and a certain ?Little Lady? at the city desk. See how I…

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Culture

The Fourth and Fifth Estates

A couple weeks back, a Sonoma Index-Tribune reader opined about the press in a letter to the editor in which he errantly referred to us as the “third estate.” We in the press are actually the fourth estate, so named because the first three were already the clergy, the nobility and the commoners – in…

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Culture

From GunBun to Gayot

Yes, ’twas I who wrote the January/February cover story on Gundlach-Bunschu Winery for Vineyard and Winery Management Magazine. Winery scion Jeff Bundschu is a veritable quote machine in the interesting position of maintaining four generations of family legacy while aggressively embracing the future (I once produced a Gun-Bun tribute video for the Sonoma Valley Vintner’s…